Value Of China's Foreign Trade Enterprise Business Intelligence Applications

With the development of cloud computing, second-generation Internet, the Internet of things and other new technologies, foreign trade enterprises are facing a brand new international business environment, which includes market globalization, diversified and personalized customer demand, accelerating frequency change, expansion and intensification of competitive scope, and trade patterns changing. Achieving complete informationization of foreign trade management and decision-making intellectualization has become the most significant path to improve the international competitiveness of China’s foreign trade enterprises.This paper mainly summarizes the motivation behind the application of business intelligence in enterprises, and discusses the status quo and value proposition of the growing trend. The author believes this research is still in its exploratory stage as it relates to a wide range of aspects and fields. However, with regard to the shortages of the application process, the path of establishing such an infrastructure is recommended so that those enterprises can avoid application barriers and make better use of the intelligent decision-making system to gain competitive advantages.According to reference literatures, there is no unified theory of business intelligence application. However, from the angle of application value, many of the classic economic theory can help us systematically understand the motivations behind business intelligence applications. This paper provides an explanation of the business intelligence application from the perspective of enterprise competitive advantage and transaction cost theory.Based on the principles and theories mentioned above, this paper designs an index system to evaluate the business intelligence application of foreign trade enterprises, and then, employs the expert assessment method and the Analytic Hierarchy Process to decide index weights with utilitarian analysis, in order to uncover the value and motivations of business intelligence applications for China’s foreign trade enterprises. Studies have shown that the more effectively enterprises use business intelligence applications, the more they can demonstrate their business value. The value acquired through effective enterprise data analysis is reflected from deeper layer applications.Currently, there has appeared a trend of growing diversification in business intelligence applications of China’s foreign trade enterprises as it is seen in every link of the value chain. The fact strongly proves that business intelligence application is more than a choice of enterprise strategy. More importantly, it should be viewed from the perspective of how it influences the overall enterprise strategy...